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This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on July 2, 2025. Watch the full video here.
Seth Jones: Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Seth Jones. And I run the Defense and Security Department here at CSIS. Just want to start off by saying that we are very proud to partner with AUSA for this conversation, and actually for all of the Landpower Dialogues. This will be the ninth event in our Strategic Landpower Dialogue series. We’re also grateful for the support of General Dynamics. So thank you to the General Dynamics team for supporting this series. This conversation would not be possible without them.
We’re honored today to welcome General James Mingus, vice chief of staff of the Army, for a discussion about the Army’s force planning, readiness, initiatives to build a modern, capable force. General Mingus, it’s great to see you back again. He was here for our Global Security Forum in a slightly different setup, with the rest of the vices up there. So sorry you don’t have the rest of the team with you up there. You’re on your own this time. But we’re really looking forward to continuing some of the issues that came up with that discussion, but this time focused on the Army. I’m only briefly going to talk through General Mingus’ bio.
He graduated from Winona State University, where he was commissioned through the ROTC program. He served in a variety of Army roles through his career, including the Third Infantry Division in Germany is a platoon leader, as chief of current operations with JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, as chief of the Commander’s Action Group for CENTCOM, and as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg with, as we counted 12 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan throughout his career. And after spending time as director of the Joint Staff, he assumed his current role as the 39th vice chief of staff of the Army in January 2024.
So we’re very, very fortunate to have General Mingus here with us again to discuss the role of land power. Mark, I will hand this over to you, and your capable hands. Thanks for doing this.
Mark Cancian: Well, thanks, Seth. And thanks to AUSA for partnering with us on this event. For all the discussion about multi-domain operations, the land domain retains a special place because that’s where human beings spend most of their time. Our speaker today, General Mingus, has emphasized the role of land power and land forces. He’s committed the Army to remaining the most professional, lethal, and feared land force in the world today, tomorrow, and into the future. General, thanks for joining us today. And we –
Gen. James Mingus: Happy birthday, everybody. (Laughter.) Two-forty-nine for the country and 250 for the Army. So happy birthday. Hope everybody has a good weekend.
Col. Cancian: Great. You know, there was a special parade about that too.
Gen. Mingus: I think there was. I was in Philadelphia for the birthday, but I saw the parade on TV. It was pretty cool.
Col. Cancian: So we typically start with asking our guest about the future of land power, now and up to, say, 2040. So why don’t we start there? Where do you see land power today and going into the future?
Gen. Mingus: Well, Mark, you kind of alluded to it. We’ve been in – terms of the history of land power – we’ve been fighting on land for 6,000 years, at sea for 4,000, and in the air for about 100, cyber and space for a couple of decades. But the joint force, the land force is part of that. And none of us can do it alone.
The dominant roles – and if you look at roles and responsibilities of the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the Marine Corps – even though there was crossover and joint solutions for each one of those there was kind of a niche capability associated with the Air Force and air dominance, and the air wings that go with the Navy air dominance and Navy for maritime dominance, land forces for land dominance. But in the of future warfare that’s out there, and it started with Admiral Aquilino. He looked at Charlie Flynn and said: Hey, I want you to be able to hold maritime targets at risk. I want you to be able to hold air targets at risk. Thus emerged the Multi-Domain Task Force and our long-range precision fires.
We, the land force, think that we have to be able to operate in all domains, not just the land force. Yes, we still have to be able to seize and hold terrain. We still have to be able to do joint forcible entry operations. We still have to be able to protect. We still have to be able to defend We still have to be able to do offense and stability operations. But we have to help our joint partners to be able to seize and move forward. The very essence of maneuver is fires and movement combined together. We fire so we can move, and we move so we can put more effective fires on the adversary.
Put those together as a joint force, land helping maritime, air helping land, maritime helping – none of us are going to be able to do this by ourselves in the future. So think long-range, disaggregated, survivable fires in the first and second island chain, facilitating the joint force to be able to get into the WEZ, or the weapons engagement zone, and vice-versa, working back and forth together. That is the future of the joint force.
Col. Cancian: Great. And when Secretary Hegseth initiated this 8 percent shift in resources, can you talk a little about how the Army approached that, since many strategists on the outside looked at cutting the size of the Army to fund other capabilities, the other services. But the Army had a lot of initiatives in the transformation initiative to meet this new threat. So could you talk a little about what the -d how the Army approached that?
Gen. Mingus: Well, you know, the chief, and the secretary, and myself, and several others months ago sat down and we realized, between the threat, the rate of technology change, and the budgetary realities were coming together as a head. The Army has essentially moved at about a flat rate with our total obligation authority or our budget top line. It’s been flat generally for about 10 years. Our buying power continues to get less and less every year. Meanwhile, technology and the threat are evolving at a rate that is unprecedented. And so we kind of saw that we needed to do some pretty big things to change without going after our combat formations, our maneuver formations.
So we started to work on the edges. We looked at every single headquarters from top to bottom. Our staffs, we thought, were probably oversized. We thought we could reduce in our civilian workforce. We thought that there were some programs that were no longer necessary – and, oh by the way, would not survive in the next fight. And so we went after the things that we thought we weren’t going to need in the next fight, to reinvest that in the things that would be needed in the next fight. Thus, Army Transformation Initiative. We’re going to reinvest, and you’ve heard our secretary say this, over the course of the next five, six years, about 45 (billion dollars) to $48 billion back into the Army to modernize at a rate that we have not done since the ’80s.
We just sat in a session – and we’re going to get it into next-gen command and control. That process would normally take probably – and Pete and I started this journey a decade ago – and it was a decade-long process. But, Pete, I’m here to tell you that I think we’re going to be able to do this in two-and-a-half to three years, by this reinvestment. And I know we’re going to get into the essence of what next-gen command and control is going to be. But we know that we need to rapidly transform. And we don’t have time to wait.
Col. Cancian: Well, and you raised the question about command and control and the network, which you’ve cited as the top priority. Could you expand on what the Army is trying to do there?
Gen. Mingus: Well, because, you know, I hate to keep calling Pete out here, but he and I were at the center of this literally a decade ago. On the tactical side, when we began this journey there was about 17-18 disparate battle command systems that we had across the Army. All were built over the course of several decades. None of them were built to be able to be interoperable. None of them were built to seamlessly work together. They were built in stovepipes. If you think about a stack from data, to transport, to physical, to application, and the elements inside of every one of those battle command systems had the essence of each one of those parts of the network.
We began a journey to converge all that into a singular architecture, but kind of fell off the wagon a little bit for a couple of years in the middle. Next-generation command and control is going to actually realize that. We have now physically prototyped this twice now at Project Convergence. We are going to give it to 4ID starting this summer. They are going to experiment with this. It’s even – you know, prototype is still what we’re calling it, but I would say it’s an advanced, proven prototype. And once we have kind of shown that this is demonstrated, that when we think we’ll be able to very quickly scale this across the entire Army.
The flip on it too is that as we look at the network, the vast majority of both our expenditures and where we spend our time is in the physical and the application layer of that network that I just described. This time, we’re starting with how that data is stored, how it’s used, how it’s computed, and then how we move that data. So the data layer and the transport layer, those are the places where we’re going to spend the vast majority of our intellectual property and all the things that we need to do to get that right. Because once you get that set, then the physical and the application component of it – given the fact that the vast majority of that is all software – that can be very easily put on top and work for the future.
Col. Cancian: So to build on this question about strategy and Army transformation. One of the big questions that, you know, is out there in the community is about the role of tanks in the future. The Army, and the Russians, and the Ukrainians, and the Israelis all think that there is a future there for tanks. And the Army is moving to a new version of the M1. On the other hand, the Marine Corps and others say that its day has passed. So can you talk a little about what the Army sees as the role of the tank and the future of the Abrams program?
Gen. Mingus: Yeah. So, yes, we are going to begin to very rapidly field what we’re going to call the M1E3 tank. And I’ll come back to kind of the fundamental differences between the E3 tank and the M1A3 SEP3 that is currently the most modern tank we have in our formations today. But the role of the tank – and I know that’s a big question because we’ve seen our M1s take battle damage losses in Ukraine from low and inexpensive UA V, some top-down attacks. That is true. That has happened. I have physically seen those tanks that are out there. But no platform was designed to operate independently by itself.
A carrier never sails by itself. It typically has at least three to five destroyers or cruisers that accompany that carrier. A tank is not designed to operate by itself. At the highest level, in our capstone doctrine, we say that unified land operations is how we do it, which is the ability to execute offense, defense, and stability operations simultaneously. You come down below that, combined arms and maneuver is the combination of all the warfighting functions put together in a meaningful way, synchronized over time.
And so the power of engineers, infantry, armor, artillery, combined together is still, I think, the future of warfare for the land force, in addition to the things we talked about earlier on the cross-domain stuff. The role of the tank is still going to be there, I think, for the – for the years. And, oh by the way, China has 3,000 tanks and Russia has 5,000 tanks. We have 1,700. So tanks are going to be around for a little while.
Col. Cancian: And let’s talk about fires, because you raised that, the combined arms. A lot is happening in the fires domain. A lot of interest in long-range precision fires. One thing we saw in Ukraine is the large role for cannon artillery. So I was wondering if you could talk a little about where the Army is going with fighters.
Gen. Mingus: I think that’s going to, actually, be when – in terms of the changing character of war – the who you fight, where you fight, what do you fight with, and how do you fight. You can’t predict the who you fight and where you fight. The two things we do control is how you fight and what do you fight with. I mentioned the six warfighting functions that we combine together and call that combined arms maneuver. The center of that in the way we fight has been the movement and maneuver function. We come up with a scheme of maneuver. Where’s the enemy weak? Where is he strong? Where do I fix? Where do I flank? And we develop a scheme of maneuver to figure that out. And then we come up with a scheme of fires and a scheme of protection and a scheme of sustainment, and all the other things that go with that to support that scheme of fires.
The big epiphany that – whether it’s lessons learned coming out of Ukraine, what we just saw in Israel, in other places around the world – is that the notion of pulling together offensive and defensive fires into a single function, and the notion that – and I’ll come back to, you know, fires itself – but direct fires typically was combined with the maneuver or the movement and maneuver component of this. Direct fires, we now have systems that will reach out and touch eight, 10, 12 kilometers. We have long-range precision fires that will reach out as close to 2,000 kilometers. So now you’ve got air defense, and the vast majority of the things that are going to kill our troopers in the future are going to come from the air.
And so instead of point defense, defending points on the ground, we have to go on the offense when it comes to air defense, bring those together in a much more comprehensive fires function, that includes long-range direct fires, indirect fires, long-range precision fires, and air defense in this – into a singular function. And your scheme of fires is now what is probably going to be the coin of the realm, with maneuver on the back end of that, because you still have to be able to plant a flag at the end. You still have to close the last hundred yards. You still have to come in and have to be able to plant the flag. But that will be after the fact and post-taking out the integrated fires complex of the adversaries that are out there. I know that was a long-winded answer, but it is going to be one of the bigger changes, I think, in how – you know, in the changing character war, in terms of how we fight.
Col. Cancian: And let me dig a little more. And this comes from my time at Fort Sill as an artillery officer. You know, the balance between precision fires and non-precision fires. I think before the war in Ukraine many people saw the future as almost entirely long-range precision fires. What we’ve seen in Ukraine is that non-precision fires have a role and, in fact, the Ukrainians are expending huge amounts of ammunition. So as the Army thinks about the future, how do you see that balance and building enough inventories to meet those demands?
Gen. Mingus: Yeah. Well, magazine depth is one of the things, I mean, the chief and I, it keeps us up – both up at night. Mass with precision are still going to be there. Ukraine is still – I don’t have the exact numbers. I haven’t looked at them in a week or two. But, I mean, they’re still expending in excess of 4(,000) or 5,000 rounds a day of just 155. And so mass is – despite all the technology that has gone into that front, mass is still a critical component of this.
And so because of the cost of a lot of these precision-guided munitions, you’re going to still need to have those. You’re going to still need to be able to hold targets at range, at risk, to go after exquisite things that are on – are what we would call a high pay-off target list. But once you get to the point where you need to close with and destroy, mass is still going to be a piece of that. So cannon artillery – it may not be towed. It may be mobile. That’s a point of debate within the Army, as to which way to go there. But cannon artillery, I’ll just leave it at that, is still going to be a part of the fires complex.
Col. Cancian: And one of the things we’ve seen in Ukraine is also drones. And particularly first-person viewer drones. And some people make the argument that that offsets some of the requirements for cannon artillery, maybe even mortars. On the other hand, I’ve seen people make the argument that – you know, that in theory that sounds great, but it’s much more difficult to do. So how do you see these small, masked, first-person viewer drones working with more traditional mortars and cannon artillery?
Gen. Mingus: Well, in our maneuver formations you’re going to have platoon leaders, company commanders, squad leaders, that are going to actually be employing fires from their formation, using smaller first-person drones and one-way attack drones. But we are going to – we just started this. We’ll use the 25th DIVARTY, which is going to be one of the – and I know you’re going to get to this later in terms of transformation and contact 2.0. But there’s a – there’s a belief out there that the singular way in which we approach fires, going back to the validity and use of cannon artillery, you know, is still valid.
And so what we have done with the 25th DIVARTY is we think we’re imagining in a future where, instead of it just being all tube, we’re going to give them a battalion of HIMARS. We’re going to give them a battalion of 777s. And then in that third battalion, it’ll be a combination of mortars, 105s, launched effects, loitering munitions, first-person drone, that makes up the delta for the longer range and the cannon artillery. In our warfighter experiments, we do a series of exercises – it’s all simulated. But if you’re in the division or corps staff, it’s pretty real, for those that have been through a division or corps warfighter. Because it is simulated we can play with those combinations across multiple divisions and corps in every single one, without actually having to employ real capability into the field.
So every division, corps, warfighter, we tweak those combinations of rockets, artillery, drones, mortars, et cetera, to see what is the right combination. PrSM Inc. 4 is another one that we can play with today in simulation. That won’t be here for another couple years, but that is going to be the ATACMS replacement, which is one of our family of long-range precision fires but it reaches out to 1,000 kilometers. Think about the difference there. You know, how does that change the battlefield architecture and the battlefield geometry for our war fighters? We can do that today under live conditions without actually having to put that stuff in the field. So another example of how we’re playing with a combination of fires.
Col. Cancian: Now, the question of long-range fires is – tremendous interest in that because of particularly the Chinese defensive bubble and desires to try to stay out of that, but fire into it, without exposing the platforms. How do you deconflict Army long-range fires with the Air Force, which is also in the long-range fires business, and sometimes sees that as their job?
Gen. Mingus: Well, it goes back to my comments in the beginning about the joint force. We are going to have to create opportunities for the Air Force to be able to get in and be more effective. So that movement and fires combination, you know, it’s Army, Air Force, but there’s a naval component, there’s a space component. How do we help each other create windows of opportunities so that you can move to place more effective fires on the adversary? This integrated fires complex that China has developed, you know, there’s a term that is used often inside the building, and I think even outside the building, of counter-C5ISRT.
Lot of acronyms. Lot of things inside that. It’s a couple of functions. It’s a couple of domains. It’s processes. I mean, when people say counter-C5ISRT, what do you mean by that? I’m a simple instrument. That means you’ve got to disrupt and deny his network. You got to win the counter-recon fight. You got to win the counter-fires fight. And you put those into operational terms in the joint force, and that’s the way we need to approach the integrated fires complex for adversaries that employ preclusionary tactics. Because they want to keep you outside, so they never have to get involved in a close fight with the United States of America.
Col. Cancian: And one thing you’ve touched on a couple of times is air defense. And the Army and land forces are in a very different place than they were 20 years ago. That is, we’re in a situation now where there is a major air threat that would be beyond what the Air Force can handle. So the Army, and the Marine Corps also, are rebuilding their ground-based air defenses. Now, the Army started thinking about this 10 years ago and developing the systems that it would need. Those are now coming online. Could you talk a little more about air defense, ground-based air – and the expansion of that in the Army’s program and force structure?
Gen. Mingus: Yeah, one of the bill payers when we grew from 33 to, what was it, Pat – 54, I think, brigades, during the height of the – height of the war – I think we started prior to 9/11 at 33, we grew to 54. I know there were designs to go to 57. But one of the bill payers was the air defense structure. We drew – there were others, but they were one of the bill payers. That cannot be part of the future. And so we are reintroducing that structure from the tactical level all the way up to the theater level, in the form of M-SHORAD battalions, and IFPC battalions, and additional Patriot battalions. Potentially combination of IFPC and Patriot battalions that are out there. And reintroducing that structure into our formation so we can rebuild the air defense community. With the vision still of, how do you converge offensive and defensive fires into a singular function?
But what we can’t lose sight of is even if that – after that structure is in, is two things. One, just because we started with this platform, that doesn’t mean that we’re stuck with that platform for the next 20 years. Because the rate in which things are changing, that M-SHORAD capability that we have today is going to have to be something different in four or five years from now. And then the second part is that even though we’re reintroducing air defense back into the Army force structure, layered protection – so even our maneuver formations that don’t have an air defense role are still going to have to perform those kind of functions, from one-way attack drones and other things that are coming at them.
Col. Cancian: I have one last question on air defense. Patriots. I think Patriots are maybe the most used part of Army force structure. It seems every time I open the media, you know, there’s another Patriot unit moving from hither to there. Can you talk about that community and the Army’s plans for that community, given how useful it is and how used it is?
Gen. Mingus: It is our most stressed force element. We have 15 Patriot battalions in the Army, one of which is going through a major kind of redo. So, really, 14 that are available. We have three that are assigned in the Indo-Pacific, one that’s assigned at EUCOM, and the rest are service retained. And the vast majority of them, we’ve have – and one of our air defense Patriot battalions that’s in CENTCOM has been there for close to 500 days. So, yes, very stressed force element. But they’re very proud of what they have done. And, you know, just read the news clippings that are out there in terms of what they just did, defend Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Very, very proud organization.
We know we have to grow that. We have plans on the table to build a 16th, 17th, and 18th. And that’s not to include the Patriot battalion that we’re going to put in Guam as part of the Guam defense system. The IFPC battalions that are coming online will help offset that as well, even though it’s not quite the same capability. In some environments, that actually is more appropriate to apply than a full-up Patriot battalion. So grossly expanding, you know, our capability on the air defense side.
The other thing that is going to be – will fundamentally shift, and this is specific to, initially, the Patriot, but it will then apply to our other air defense formation, is the new radar and the battle command system that goes with it. So if you’ve heard the term IBCS and LTAMDS, LTAMDS is the new radar. So instead of what we have today, with our Q-series radars that have about a 270-view look, which grows – or, kind of negates how much coverage that you can have, the new LTAMDS is 360.
It also goes from about 85 kilometers up and 85 kilometers out to 300 by 300. So greatly expands the range, the altitude, and it’s a 360. So you could take those same 15 Patriot battalions we have today, give it IBCS and LTAMDS, and fundamentally when you operationally employ it, it’s, like, immediately doubling that capability. You would have the equivalent of about 30 Patriot battalions, because instead of having to deploy as batteries you can break them up and disperse them in a much more tactical way.
Col. Cancian: Let’s move to another topic that you had raised earlier, which is this transformation in contact. Can you talk a little about what was accomplished in 1.0, where you see 2.0 going, and how this relates to the maybe more general Army Transformation Initiative?
Gen. Mingus: Well, TiC 1.0, we knew we needed to figure out mobility requirements, firepower requirements, unmanned system requirements, next generation. We didn’t quite have the next gen C2, but what we called C2 fix. We needed to fix the network and the communications component of it. And there were a couple of other enablers that we gave them. We chose three brigades inside the Army, one out of the 101st, one out of 10th Mountain, one out of the 25th, and then we chose one division headquarters as well. And we infused them with what we had available today from a mobility, next-gen squad weapon, the network, UAS, counter-UAS, electronic warfare, in quantities greater than what we believe they would probably need.
Because we can sit here in a room like this, or a room in the Pentagon, and say, how many UAVs does a brigade need? Is it 300? Is it 400, 500? I don’t know. How many does it take before you have saturated that organization where they can no longer employ it? What’s the number before you’ve saturated the unit, so that they may be able to employ it but they can’t actually use the information that’s coming back? And so we gave these formations varied numbers of those types of capabilities so that we could drive that feedback back up to us and say, hey, the magic number is 312.
We did the same thing with mobility. We started off thinking that a light and a mobile was going to be differentiated between, you know, 80 some ISVs and 201 ISVs. What we’ve done after multiple rounds of this is that we think the number is actually about 250. And it’s a combination of what we call the ISV-9, the ISV-5, and then the ISV-heavy, which is the Silverado variant. And so that’s just an example of how we provided a capability, they went out and experimented over the course of several months, took it to a combat training center rotation, did a validation with it, and then they provided that feedback back to the building so that we could solidify. And the chief just made the decision on what that Mobile Brigade Combat Team design is going to look like here about a month ago. And so within one year, which normally takes a couple, we went from experimentation to an approved design for the new Mobile Brigade Combat Team.
Col. Cancian: Great.
Gen. Mingus: And TiC 2.0 is just going to expand upon that. We’re going to start that this year. So beyond our light formations, heavy striker. I mentioned that what we’re going to do with 25th DIVARTY, the sustainment brigades, multi-functional brigades. So we’re going to expand this beyond just our light formations to all the varied formations that are out there for TiC 2.0.
Col. Cancian: Well, I’m going to take some of the questions from online. I would say to our online audience, you can send questions in by hitting the appropriate button on your screen there.
One of the questions that came in relates to this – these ideas about future war fighting. And that is, how is the Army thinking about fighting in an environment where communications are degraded, and maybe even precision, like GPS, is degraded?
Gen. Mingus: So you always have to have a PACE plan. And no matter how resilient, robust, how good – Pete and I should say that – you know, we’d get the people that’d come in and say, well, your network is going to be vulnerable to this, this, and thins. And we’re like, you will never develop the perfect network. And even if you could develop the perfect network, it would be unaffordable. And so you have to know that there’s going to be times where you’re going to either be disrupted, intermittent, it’s going to be latent. And so the PACE plan is still – you know, it’s been around for a long time, which means you’ve got a primary means, an alternate means, a contingency, and an in-extremis. In other words, multiple means in which to do that.
So, an example of not just the old fashioned – I went from a radio, to a runner, to a landline. You know, that used to be kind of the old PACE plan. Just looking at the transport layer, there’s multiple ways and means in which you can move data. It could be cellular. It could be multiple types of waveforms from tactical radios we have on the ground between our pLEOs, commercial, military, and geo, and all the SATCOM that’s out there, that is another means that’s out there. We have high-capacity beyond line of sight that can be done at the terrestrial layer. We have an air layer where you can put up relays that it can extend that network. So those are just examples of how you can develop multiple redundancies just within the transport layer. And that’s generally where you’re going to get jammed up anyway. And so that’s where you need to build the redundancies that are in there.
Col. Cancian: And how about challenges to precision? My understanding is that one of the problems the Ukrainians have run into is that GPS jamming has become so common that, in fact, some systems, like Excalibur, are really not very effective anymore. Can you talk a little about how the Army is thinking about this environment, where precision will be challenged?
Gen. Mingus: As you look at how they’re spinning over there in the electronic warfare space, they’ll employ a system. One side or the other will figure it out. They’ll come up with a countermeasure. The other side will do a software spin within three to four weeks to counter that, and they’re back up and running. And so we talk about modular, open system architecture, software defined. We cannot continue to build hardware-defined systems that are out there, because if we can’t keep pace with how that exact thing is going to change, and we can’t predict the rate of it, but we if we know that it’s open in its design, and we know that it’s open in its architecture from the beginning, once you enter into something you’ve now got to have the agility to continue to innovate at the – you know, nobody ever thought we would innovate at the tactical edge, but that’s what it’s going to take in the future.
Col. Cancian: You talked about drones and the expanded use on the battlefield, and then what the Army is doing to incorporate those into its force structure. I want to ask about the flip side, which is counter-UAS. And the Army, 10 years ago, started doing a lot of work on that. I think much of that developmental work was sort of at a lower level, but a recognition that this was going to be needed on modern battlefields. Of course, with the war in Ukraine that has – those efforts have increased. And I tell people that, you know, there are some systems that are beginning to emerge from the developmental primordial soup and be fielded. And certainly, many of them and tested in Ukraine. And I might ask, where do you see that element going?
Gen. Mingus: No single solution. It’s got to be at every level. It’s got to be layered. Every squad’s got to be able to protect itself, all the way up to formations that provide higher-end capability. It’s going to be a combination of high-energy lasers. It’s going to be – or, lasers, period. It’s going to be – there may be high-powered microwaves that are there. It will be interceptors. We have the Coyote Block 2Charlie, which is out there right now, our most effective interceptor that we have. But that’s not going to last. It’s going to have to be replaced.
But interceptors that continue to come down in cost, so that the price point between shot and what the adversary is doing has to be in line. We can’t shoot $130,000 missile at $1,000 drone. We’ve got to get the price points down. So – but there’s an interceptor role that’s out there. Proximity rounds. So, you know, an example of a – we’ve got these new 30-millimeter that have a small emitting radar on the front of it, goes out, comes within proximity of the drone itself, explodes, and, you know, takes the drone out. And so there’s going to be a multitude of solutions, long, short, and close in, that are out there. And once we think we’ve got it figured out, then the adversary is going to come up with something, and we need to be able to evolve. And so this is not going to be a static environment. It’s got to be something that’s moving at the rate in which the technology is moving on the other end.
Are you going to come back to flexible funding at the end? Because, you know, this is one of those areas that – instead of, like we have done in the past, where we’ll buy a system and buy that same system for 20 years, we’re going to have both the flexible funding to go with it and the agility – to whatever is out there that will deal with the threats today, in the next year, it may be something different. And we’ve got to have both the authority and then the funding flexibility to be able to switch to whatever that solution is going to be for the next year.
The last thing I would offer in this is that we recently did a session with the secretary of defense. And we are going to stand up a joint interagency task force. I’m a little bit cautious to use the term, but if we all remember back to ’03-’04, i.e., JIEDDO, that delivered the MaxxPro, that delivered some of the other high-end capabilities, well, UAVs, counter-UAS, that is our IED of today. And we need an organization that is joint, interagency, has authorities, a colorless pot of money, and the authorities to go after from requirements all the way through acquisition in a rapid way, to be able to keep pace with that.
We are in the process of standing that organization up and get it going. And this will be for – the Army’s going to lead it – but this will be a joint organization to be able to deal with joint solutions on the future. So that’s kind of a – we’ve been trying to advocate this for some time now. And the secretary recently made the decision to allow us to move out on it, because we cannot move fast enough in this space.
Col. Cancian: Well, let’s build on that, because you mentioned flexible funding, and the PPBE Reform Commission made a variety of recommendations in that regard. They were well received in the Pentagon, not so well received in the appropriations committees. So I don’t know that we’ve made a lot of progress there. And then the acquisition system. And one of the perennial criticisms is it’s just too slow. Now, there are a variety of mechanisms now to acquire systems more rapidly. And I was wondering if you could talk about those two elements, because rapid transformation requires both of them.
Gen. Mingus: If anybody’s ever seen the budget when it comes back from Congress – and we’re half of the equation, because this is the way we submit it. And it comes back with literally thousands and thousands of individual program element lines and major defense acquisition program lines. And that money is fixed, associated with a given thing. But in the – and I’ve testified to this – when it comes to things that move at a rate that is faster than a traditional budgetary cycle, we cannot do the funding and the budgeting the same way we have done in the past. And so this last year for the ’26 budget, the chief and I and a lot of folks on the Army staff spent a lot of time on the Hill trying to get three portfolios – UAS, counter-UAS, and EW – into – because we know we have to build trust with Congress. Give us – let’s start with three, and a relatively small amount of money in each one of those that is basically colorless money.
Because even inside the building, we have what comes back from the appropriations in those program elements, but then we further hem ourselves up with the difference between S&T, and R&D. Those that are familiar with, you know, as you move up the chain from 6.1, to 6.2, to 6.3, to 6.4 funding, and can’t cross that over. And then we have SAGs, which, you know, O&M, and R&M, and RDA. And so we’re, in many ways, our own worst enemies when it comes to how our budget works. So we started with those three. This next year, we’re going to ask for some things on the network. But philosophically, and what I – as we’ve been over on the Hill – is that if it’s a piece of technology that moves faster than the traditional budgetary cycle, we need to look at how we make agility and agile funding as part of how we do this.
And all the other services are in violent agreement with this approach. We’ve got the support, I think, of the building. Now, like you said, we just got to make sure we’ve got the appropriators on it. And we have to give the transparency to Congress so that they know that we’re spending our money in a wise way.
Col. Cancian: Well, I wish you well with that. I think it would be a great step forward, having come out of the programming community. Looking at the questions that are coming in online, there have been a couple on AI, and how AI will – how the Army will incorporate it, and particularly how the Army will incorporate it into its networks. So could you talk a little about that?
Gen. Mingus: The use cases are as wide as you can think. And I’ve only got a couple ideas. I mean, I’m sure there’s people in this room that have many more ideas on the application of how to use artificial intelligence. But I’ll give you, you know, a couple examples. Staffs, that we are looking to streamline so we can save combat formations. Most of the processes that we have inside the building are very, very manpower intensive. And if you look at the PERT charts associated with – pick a process that’s out there, whether it’s managing ammo, managing people, managing how the global force management process works.
Scott is very familiar with that one, as the former book briefer to the secretary of defense. Think about how many man hours you used to go to get ready for every brief every other week with the secretary of defense. Most of that can be automated and streamlined. And instead of 80 percent doing and 20 percent thinking, philosophically we need to flip that on its head, using the large language models and the artificial intelligence tools that exist today – this isn’t a futuristic thing – that does the 80 percent of the work, so that we spend more time thinking than doing. And so we kind of need to flip that on its backside.
The other example I give, when people think about information dominance and staying ahead of the adversary, well, how do you practically do that? Right after 9/11, I was in First Ranger Battalion. And Tony Thomas was my battalion commander, and Sean Jenkins, and Chris Vanek, we were all sitting around going, where’s Afghanistan at? What language do they speak? How tall are the mountains? How many rivers do they have? How many types of tribes are there? Where’s – is Pakistan on the east side of the west side of Afghan – and I’m being a little bit facetious, but there was a dearth – and you probably remember the, Sergeant Major. I mean, there was a lot – there was a dearth of information because none of us had been to Afghanistan.
And so we spent a ton of time going – if you think about the cognitive hierarchy, data, information, knowledge, understanding, shared understanding. And once you have shared understanding across the broad organization, then you have the ability to begin to implement – truly implement mission command, which is trust and empowering to get people out there to do that. But that 80/20, you spend 80 percent of your time moving from data to information to knowledge to understanding and shared understanding, where you should be going the other way around. And that piece at the top is where we should spend 80 percent of our time thinking, instead of doing at the bottom.
Artificial intelligence, and I’ll just use intelligence. The information preparation of the battlefield, which is where you take an enemy order of battle, you take their doctrine, you take the geography, you take all the things that go through that. And our intelligence professionals spend hours and hours and hours in the military decision-making process to get from doc temp or doctrinal template to situational template. Then it gets put together with your operational side, and then you have other things that go with it. But there’s just tons of time that goes into this. Well, we already know Russia’s order of battle. We know how many tanks they have. We know how many planes they have. We know how many APCs they have. We know their doctrine. We know the geography associated with all of the continent of Europe.
A situational template could be generated with an artificial intelligence tool in minutes instead of hours. And our intel professionals on the back end of this – and here’s the – and I’ll come back to this, but here’s the crux. Because you can’t lose the science. But our intel professionals on the back end of that, they’re looking at this new situational template that was generated, and in that thinking process now it’s – you know, that icon really is not on this hilltop, it’s over here. But they’re making fine-tune adjustments to what the AI model gave it.
Now, here’s the danger. If we take away that science component of what makes us all professionals and what we’ve done in our decades of experience, and we replace that with a tool, without keeping people grounded in the science, when that tool spits that thing out on the other end that intel professional isn’t going to know whether it’s garbage or not. And so there is a delicate balance here. But those are just a couple of examples of how we can use artificial intelligence.
Col. Cancian: Great. And as a former staff officer, I strongly endorse the notion of putting less time into the presentation and more about what does this mean, and what do we do about this information. Let me switch topics a little and ask you about the Army’s force structure. And one of the things the Army is doing is moving from a brigade structure, which had developed back in 2005 for the conflicts that it was then facing, to a division-based structure – back to a division-based structure. Now, most of the Army has never been in a division-based structure because, you know, they came in after the brigade structure was implemented. But you’ve been in both. So what do you see as, first, the changes the Army is making, and also, you know, the cultural side about, you know, getting the – you know, all of the Army, who haven’t been in – aren’t familiar with operating at this level, to regain those skills that the Army had previously?
Gen. Mingus: I guess I would start with, you know, brigade-centric, division-centric, it’s really echelons above brigade. You’re right. I mean, and a lot of people in this room, I came in the Army in 1981. And so the vast majority – my first 20 years, I lived in a division, corps, theater Army centric, because we knew in large-scale combat it was a division, corps, theater Army fight, a joint fight. And those division, corps, theater armies were part of a joint force. And so that’s how we were – so the unit of actions and the way we organized was around those entities. And so that’s why you had brigades, but intel, and signal, and engineers were kind of their own entities that were – that would come together. And the division commander or the corps commander could task organize at the point of need to be able to move those resources around.
Well, 9/11 happened. And it became a brigade-centric fight. And we created what we – the term we used was modular brigades, where they were plug and play. And they had all the functions associated with what I just described. So that it could operate independently, regardless of what the higher headquarters was. So that’s why they got some of the special enablers that were built into those brigade formations. And it was a brigade-centric fight. There were still other things that helped there.
But now, as we come out of those two conflicts and realize the future is about large-scale combat, and that’s what we need to be prepared to do, we – and this really started with Mike Lundy and the – you know, the gap analysis he did back in ’16-’17 timeframe, is we need to move back to a division, corps, theater Army centric. And not everything – the other – your divisions and corps, those are your tactical formations. But the other notion that I think is still valid today is not every theater Army is the same. So USARAF and USARPAC, those two theater armies should fundamentally be different than what we do in Central-South America, or AFRICOM, or wherever, given the unique nature of the threat associated with those two particular theater armies.
Col. Cancian: And, while we’re on force structure, I want to ask about Army recruiting. That has been a tremendous success story, and really turned around over the last two years or so. And I want to ask, what has driven that success? And then the other question is, OK, so then what is the Army’s desired end strength for the active force? The Army is now in a position where it could grow the force if it wanted to. Where are you on that?
Gen. Mingus: Well, the good news is as of the first week of May our goal this year was 61,000 in the door, and 10,000 in the delayed entry program. And we hit that at the end of May, so four months ahead of time. In fact, today we’re just over 64,000 on contract. We’ll lose a couple of those between now and the end of the year, but our focus between now and in October will be to what critical MOSes are we still short, even though we’ve exceeded our goal, that we still have training seats for that we could get ourselves just a little bit healthier? And so the chief and the secretary have given Johnny Davis, our USREC commander, a little bit of leeway to go slightly above our goal of 61, to meet some of those critical shortfalls.
But you’re exactly right, Mark. I mean, this journey started probably two years ago. We missed the mark two years in a row. We realized we had a big problem. The Army was coming down at a rate that was unsustainable. Both accessions and recruiting were headed in the wrong direction. The propensity to serve, the eligibility to serve, lines and trajectories for those were headed in the wrong direction. And so we needed to fundamentally shift and alter how we were doing recruiting.
So it started at the top. We took our Recruiting Command Headquarters, made it a direct report to the Army. We elevated that individual to a three-star. We expanded the amount of recruiters that we put out into the force. Made sure that the screening criteria for the recruiters we were putting out there were of the highest caliber. We inserted texts and warrants into this population as well to help with the data analytics and understand the demographics of our country, using live data to better get after the recruits that are out there.
There are so many programs – going back to AI and LLM – the power of those. Instead of a recruiter having to make a hundred phone calls, of which he might get five or six that that pan out, he can make 20 and 10 of them pan out. And so the use of our recruiters’ time with the model, models that are out there is making our recruiters much more effective. And then expanding the population in who we recruit. My son is a classic example. He went to two years of college. Came home one day said, dad, I’m – you know, college ain’t for me. I’m going to enlist in the Coast Guard.
We have a ton of kids out there in this country that go to college and it may not be for them, but they’re great kids. But they want to serve. But we never had actively gone after that population. So expanding the age demographics, instead of solely focusing on junior and seniors in high school, has also made a difference as well. And so all those things, I think, have compounded and are now coming to fruition in this year. But it’s not over. This battle will continue. And so we’re going to – we can’t just rest on our laurels. We know that ’26 is going to be harder than ’25, and ’27 is going to be harder than ’26. And so we have to continue to press.
Col. Cancian: So let me ask two related questions, and to build off of that. I mean, one is, where would the Army like to be for its active duty force structure? I mean, at one point the Army wanted to get back to, whatever, 485, you know, their level before 9/11. You know, that’s been quite challenging. On the other hand, they’ve been down as low as 450. And, you know, that’s, I think arguably, too low. So where would you like to be there? And then, sort of going with that and building on your points about the recruiting environment, what do you see as long term Army force – Army personnel mixes? You know, you have reservists. You have active duty. You’ve got civilians. And then you’ve got contractors.
Gen. Mingus: Well, let’s see. Two years ago, I guess, is when we probably were at our worst point between structure and end strength imbalance. Our structure called for an Army of 485,000 and we had about, at that time, 446-47,000. That’s a lot of icons, in other words, units, that were not filled to where they needed to be. So a year and a half ago we made some pretty tough called total Army analysis decisions on bringing our structure down to about 470 to get it a little closer to where our end strength is. Our end strength today is at 450.
We, by the end of next year, our glide path will take us to 454, and then by ’27 – probably early in ’27 – we’ll be at 458. And, going back to Army Transformation Initiative and some of the bigger structure changes that we’re making, we want to get both structure and end strength closer to 458. Once we hit those two benchmarks, I think we’ll pause, reassess. Is that where we stay and flat line? Or do we continue to move up or down from there? But 458, right now, is kind of the sweet spot that we’ve come to, both on a structure and an end strength standpoint.
Col. Cancian: And, on this question of structure, you said the Army might, you know, make another set of decisions about bringing structure and end strength closer together. The Army did a year ago or so make a series of very difficult decisions to cut spaces. You increased a couple of places where transformation indicated you needed, you know, more structure, and then cut a lot of spaces. I mean, first, can you say anything about that process? Because, you know, that is extremely difficult for any service. And, second, you know what a second phase of that might look like?
Gen. Mingus: That’s the premise behind the Army transformation – what we think we’ll look at and kind of analyze over the course of the next year. But one of the bigger and tougher decisions we did make this year was the announcement that those that are out there – and I’m happy to try to explain a little bit – but the Army – or, the cavalry squadrons inside of our combat aviation brigades. That was probably our biggest maneuver formation structure change as associated with what we did this year.
And the premise and the logic behind it is that – what is the role of future manned aircraft in the next fight? We think Apaches have a role, but manned rotary wing reconnaissance in the traditional sense of going deep, is that still survivable? Or does the Apache, with launched effects in a firing box 40-50 kilometers off, still achieving effects deep, but not putting those manned platforms at risk? So that’s just an example of one of the tougher force structure decisions that we did make this year.
And the other thing it’s going to allow us to do is pure fleet the entire aviation community with AH-64Echo models. It’ll help us with our crews and maintainers, and be able to rebalance that force of the attack battalions that we do have in our Army will be absolutely fully manned. They’ll have the maintenance – and we’re actually going to plus it up because we’d always shorted the maintenance side – to the levels that they needed to be. And we’ll be able to pure fleet the entire Army with the Echo model Apache.
Let me take two questions that have come in from the audience. One is about Golden Dome, and the Army’s piece of that, and how you see that will affect Army acquisition and structure.
Without getting into, you know, the sensitive part of Golden Dome, but I mean, I think everybody’s tracking the space, the air, the terrestrial component of Golden Dome, layered. There’s the endo, there’s the exo, you know, in terms of the phases of how you protect from UAVs, all the way up to ballistic missiles. The Army, when it comes to the counter-value portion, how you defend critical infrastructure within the continental United States, Guam Hawaii, and the other territories that are out there, that is still going to be a large component from the land force that will be able to provide that capability. And so we are integrated in the build of that design. And the land force, the Army, I think, is going to have a large role in what eventually Golden Dome becomes.
Col. Cancian: And another question has come in, and I think a lot of people are wondering about, is the structure of the infantry units. There’s the infantry squad vehicle that’s coming online. Very light vehicle. Will make these units much lighter. The Army also has a variety of, you know, heavier vehicles, all the way up, you know, to armored, you know, MRAP kind of vehicles. So how do you see that mix in the future?
Gen. Mingus: Well, there’s a little bit of a misnomer with the ISV. Pat and I grew up in light formations most of our life. We moved at 2.5 miles an hour. We generally had to walk 12 miles every time we wanted to go somewhere. The ISV is, plain and simply, a better boot. We tried to mess with our – because light formations are what you’re going to need in compartmentalized terrain, rugged terrain, dense urban terrain, the last hundred yards when you close with and destroy the enemy. I mean, light infantry still have a huge – I mean, we don’t have enough of them. And just large-scale combat eats infantrymen. But moving at 2.5 miles an hour is just, from an operational mobility perspective, it just – it doesn’t get you there anymore. And so instead of walking 12, you ride 10, walk two.
What we don’t want to do is overcomplicate. It is simply a mobility platform. Because I get asked all the time, hey, what about protection? It’s not armored. And, well, if you’re fighting that vehicle, then you’re employing it in the wrong way. Graham was out in Hawaii as a brigade commander. He was able to do this, and use it in the Indo-Pacific, the JLTV, and some of the other platforms. For that environment, it’s just too heavy. You can’t get it there. And it’s not a great fighting platform to begin with. So we brought the ISV into our formations to allow our light formations to be able to move much more rapidly, be more agile. And, because you’re only walking two instead of walking 12, when you get to that target you’re far more lethal than you would have been, had you had to walk 12 to get there.
Col. Cancian: Another question that’s come online that many people ask about is the relationship in the future between TRADOC and Army Futures Command. And can you tell us a little about this state of that discussion?
Gen. Mingus: The merger?
Col. Cancian: Merger, yes.
Gen. Mingus: Yeah. So some of us were around when we – when we split out. And it’s an example of, in a perfect world, could we have kept it separate? Yes. But if I had to trade between standing down a maneuver formation, a DIVARTY, or a brigade, I mean, which brigade do you want to stand down? First brigade or 10th Mountain? I mean – or, bringing that organization back together and gain some efficiencies. In its original vision, because, going back to air defense, the other bill payer at the time of war was TRADOC. We took a lot of the talent out of TRADOC for 15 years. We manned them at 60 percent for about 15 years. And then when we woke up in 2014-2015 timeframe and said, why is TRADOC not doing what we asked them to do? Well, if you take the talent and the manning away from for 15 years, you should not be surprised by the results.
We tried to, for a lot of good reasons, energize the requirements and acquisition and bring some energy back to our modernization priorities. And so the notion of Army Futures Command, concepts, requirements, driving faster acquisition, was a good idea at the time. But now that we’ve looked at this five, six, seven years later, what we didn’t probably appreciate enough was for those that have heard the term DOTMLPF integration, and how you take doctrine, organizational design, leader development, material requirements, training, you know, bring that together in a meaningful way so that you have a real capability on the back end of it, we’ve taken the best of both those organizations and what they were doing, and we’re going to bring them back together, and so we streamline how we do that DOTMLPF force mod proponent and requirements process. So we think, in the end, because of all we’ve learned over the last 10 years, this will be a much more effective organization on the back end.
Col. Cancian: And will there still be an organization in Texas there? Or will that all be physically –
Gen. Mingus: Yes. Yeah, we’ll still have an entity that’s at Eustis. So the Future Concepts Capabilities, FCC, we used to be the old ARCIC, that will stay at Eustis. The four-star will be in Austin. But you’ll still have a(n) entity that – you know, the old guts of the TRADOC will remain at Eustis. But the four-star will live in Austin. So you’ll still have entities in both places.
Col. Cancian: Gotcha. Another question that’s come in, and this relates to recruiting. And the Army’s had, as you discussed, tremendous success over the last year or two. How is the quality of the new recruits? And how are they doing once they get into the Army? Do they get through basic? Have they done well out in the larger Army?
Gen. Mingus: I believe, you know, based on the formations that I’ve been out to and seen, that – from first term attrition, lethality, warrior ethos, all those kinds of things, you know, they’re as good as they’ve been since I’ve been in the Army. The other kind of misnomer too is those that have heard of the term Future Soldier Prep Course, going back to one of the initiatives we had within recruiting, and the propensity to serve, and eligibility serve, and particularly the eligibility to serve. Some have weight problems. Some, based on maybe no fault of their own, had some challenges in their academic background and couldn’t meet the academic requirements to come in the Army.
And so we came up with the notion of let’s create, like, a little prep course that works either the physical or the cognitive side of things, bring them to the Army standard, and then allow them to go through the pipeline and come in to be a soldier. And what we have found is those kids going through the Future Soldier Prep Course, because they’ve had to take the extra step, they’ve had to take the extra mile to go to get themselves to a level, their numbers when it comes to first-term attrition, and will to serve, and standards and discipline, actually perform at a higher level than a lot of our folks who just come through the normal pipeline. So that’s been actually a kind of a good thing.
Col. Cancian: And I think that was a very imaginative response to the challenges. And I think that as we look forward, with the propensity to serve being, you know, quite low and so many potential recruits being ineligible because of various reasons, something like this, I think, makes a lot of sense for all the services.
A question, an issue that I think is close to your heart, which is the physical fitness test. And, you know, this, of course, gets a lot of attention out there in the Army, because they all have to do it. You’ve made a couple of changes. You may be thinking about some additional changes. And then the Army has worked hard to come up with gender-neutral standards. And, you know, that’s been a challenge, but I think the Army has come up with some standards. So I wonder if you could talk about those two topics.
Gen. Mingus: Yeah. Well, I’ll start with holistic health and fitness, because the Army fitness test, which we’re calling it today, you know, is a subset of holistic health and fitness. Holistic health and fitness we began a couple of years ago. It’s out there across 50-plus brigades. We’ll be at 70 by the end of the year, 111 by the end of ’26, and for the whole Army by ’27-’28 timeframe. It’s going to take us a little bit longer for the Guard and Reserve. We’re going to do some pilots.
Because the solution for holistic health and fitness for Guard and Reserve is not going to be the same as it is for the active. You see them for two days a month, but what about the other 28 days a month? Who’s monitoring them? Who’s giving them their plans? How do they provide the oversight? And oh, by the way, it’s kind of their own will versus being able to direct, because they’re not getting paid. So the solution for Guard and Reserve is going to be a little different. But we’re going to very, very rapidly roll out holistic health and fitness.
It is paying for itself. The return on investment has been pretty profound. You would think it’s just making our kids better, stronger, faster, which it is. Their scores are going up. But it’s less mental health issues. It’s less acts of indiscipline. Their marksmanship scores are going out. If they do get hurt, they’re coming back much faster than they would have prior to holistic health and fitness. And so the goodness associated with it, mind, body, soul, sleep, nutrition, something we should have done a long time ago. We’ve been doing it in SOF for decades. The Army is now kind of caught up. And we’re moving out with it. And it’s going to make a big difference, in terms of making our kids better.
The AFT. You do that twice a year. So when I go around and talk to people, a lot of people want to ask about the, you know, the old ACFT, now the Army Fitness Test. And I tell them, look, that’s something you do twice a year. What you do every single day is absolutely more important than what you do – because that’s an assessment. And from that test, yes, it’s a standards thing, but it’s also a test to be able to assess, program, and execute how you’re going to train for the next six months. That’s all it is.
But in terms of the big change from ACFT to AFT, or the Army Fitness Test, is we did a couple things. One is, we got rid of the ball throw because it provided no correlation to actual tasks that you had to do. So it’s a five-event test instead of a six-event test. And for 11 series, 12 series, 13 – you know, all our combat arms formations, it is now a gender neutral, age-normed test. So male, female doesn’t matter. You’re all held to the same standard. And it moved from for the average soldier you have to be able to score a 60 – just like on the old PT test – 60 points in each one of those five events. For combat arms, gender neutral, it is 70 points in each one of those categories to pass. So that’s kind of the big – and we rolled that out on 1, June. So it is now effective across the entire Army, for both the normal standards and then for our combat arms.
Col. Cancian: Well, we’re coming close to our end, but I have a couple more questions. One more from our online audience. And that’s about the relationship with the defense industrial base. And, of course, with transformation that’s very important. With rebuilding the munition stockpiles, that’s tremendously important. I was wondering if you could talk a little about that relationship.
Gen. Mingus: I mean, I have – I think it’s a positive relationship. And I think we have tried to, on both sides – and we have folks sitting in this room that I have personal relationships with. And we try to do our part. But we still have a long way to go when it comes to working collectively together. In particular, both production rates and price points associated with some of our critical munitions that are out there. For our big frames and our big platforms, and I know those will probably stay at about the rates they are, but the DepSecDef, the SecDef, myself, the secretary, the chief, we’ve all been meeting with a lot of these vendors here as of late. And based on what has happened in Israel and Iran and the expenditures that are there, what’s happened in Ukraine, our magazine depth right now is not where it needs to be.
And a couple things need to happen. One is we need to invest to build that magazine depth back up, from Patriots, to long-range fires, to Tomahawks to, you know, SM-6. You pick the munition that’s out there. And we have to, collectively, both in our OIB and our DIB, automate and move to robotics. Because one of the challenges that we have always experienced in time of crisis is the ramp up time to go from, say, production rate of Patriots is 500 a year. I mean, it’s a little more than that, but let’s say – just use that. Say it’s 500 a year. Time of crisis, we need 10,000 a year. We can’t take two years to go from 500 a year to 10,000 a year. You’ve got to be able to do that in months or days, because that stuff – we just saw, how many was expended is a result of the 12-day war.
We can’t afford to wait that amount of time. And the only way you’re going to do it is through automation and robotics, because a robot doesn’t care whether it’s working 24 hours a day or 12 hours a day. And the human component of this is what always takes the longest amount of time. So if we’re too reliant on the human workforce in our – in our primes that are out there, then we’ll never solve this problem. And we are ready and willing to be able to begin to work with our industry partners to help do that, both on the investments on both sides. But we need – that’s something we absolutely got to get after.
Col. Cancian: When General Caine briefed the strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, he had two vignettes in there about American U.S. servicemembers and what they had done specifically, sort of personalizing what happened in these missions. And you visited many, many units and locations around the Army. And I was wondering if there were some example from your travels that, you know, shows the Army, you know, doing its work, competently, professionally, but maybe doesn’t get as much attention as, you know, other, you know, more visible elements of the armed forces.
Gen. Mingus: (Laughs.) That’s good question. I would say that even – and it’s a little bit more obvious inside the Army. But I was at JRTC here just recently when one of our brigades is going through TiC. They’re the ones that had first fielded the next-gen squad weapon, which is the new 6.8 weapon system that we had. And the chief went out the week before. And I specifically – the sergeant major of the Army and I went out, because we wanted to see the live fire. Because no matter what you see on Force on Force, if there’s some bad things going on inside an organization – you know this as well as I do, Sargent Major – I mean, it typically will manifest itself in a high-end company battalion brigade-level live fire. That’s where all the warts come out.
And I fully expected, because it’s brand new – anytime you throw a new piece of kit out there there’s generally challenges associated with it. But when we were out there with the 101st – and I spent a ton of time with a lot of the squad leaders and platoon sergeants. The way they had embraced the fielding of it, the taking of that system in, trying to perfect how – because the optics on it are a little complicated. We asked it to do three things. We asked it to be a laser range finder. We asked it to be a traditional laser. And we asked it to be able to immediately account for three different types of ammo without having to re-zero that weapon. So the optic alone is, like, a little mini computer on that thing. But the way that this unit embraced that new piece of equipment and made it their own, and helped the entire Army grow, and make this a better thing on the back end of it, was pretty powerful.
Col. Cancian: Great. And we always end with a final question about what you’re reading, and to give a little insight into, you know, what you think is important and cutting edge. So what are you’re reading now or you’ve read recently that you think is important and maybe provides some, you know, interesting insights for the Army and the future?
Gen. Mingus: Yeah. I personally love to read biographies, and biographies and understanding associated with potential adversaries. And so when Rich Clark and I were going port and starboard back as the Task Force 17 commander in Iraq in, like, ’(0)7, ’(0)8, ’(0)9 timeframe, I didn’t really know that much about Iran. I didn’t know that much about the RGC Quds Force. I mean, we had studied broadly, but the deep understanding. But we were given the mission set with, you know, how do you defeat an adversary when you can’t cross a border and actually go get after the root cause? We were dealing with the Shia militia groups inside of Baghdad and southern Iraq.
So I personally read everything I could on the psyche of Persia and Iran. Flash forward, 2014, Russia invades Ukraine, and started reading a whole bunch of stuff on, you know, Putin himself, because in an organization like Russia, I mean, you can try to understand the organization, but when you’re dealing with an individual that makes every single decision at that level we all need to understand how Putin thinks, how he makes decisions, what drives him, how did he grow up. And so the things that I think we all need to be reading is, you know, let’s get into the mind of Xi. And so that’s a couple books that that I’ve been going after on that one.
Col. Cancian: Great. Well, we’ve come to the end of our time. And I want to thank you for visiting with us and having this very interesting session. So if you’ll all join me in thanking the general. (Applause.) Thanks for coming.
(END.)
